What's Happening in Health IT

In This Issue

• Former HHS Secretary Sebelius to Speak at 2016 ONC Annual Meeting
• WEBINARS: Learn About the $1.5 Million Available to Advance Health IT Interoperability and Standards Implementation
• Register for the Move Health Data Forward Challenge Webinar
• AHRQ Awards Grant to Engage Stakeholders in the Use of Clinical Decision Support
• Want to learn more about the MACRA (Quality Payment Program) Proposed Rule?
• Change to Health App Use Scenarios and HIPAA Guidance Website

Former HHS Secretary Sebelius to Speak at 2016 ONC Annual Meeting

We’re excited to announce that Kathleen Sebelius will be joining us as a featured speaker on the first day of the 2016 ONC Annual Meeting: Committed to Better Health through IT. From April 2009 through June 2014, Sebelius served in President Barack Obama's Cabinet as the 21st Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), leading the effort to pass and implement the Affordable Care Act. In addition, Sebelius oversaw the execution of the HITECH Act – which codified the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) into statute and accelerated the adoption of health IT across the nation. As CEO of Sebelius Resources LLC, she provides strategic advice to private companies, non-profit organizations, higher education institutions, and financial investors.

View the agenda at-a-glance and register to attend.

WEBINARS: Learn About the $1.5 Million Available to Advance Health IT Interoperability and Standards Implementation

ONC announced two new cooperative agreement programs worth $1.5 million: the High Impact Pilots (HIP) and Standards Exploration Awards (SEA). These programs will help advance the nation’s implementation experience around the use of standards and technologies that support the sharing of health information to improve the delivery of health care. The HIP awards will range from $100,000 - $500,000 and require applicants to focus on 3 impact dimensions while the SEA awards will range from $50,000 - $100,000 and only require 1 impact dimension.

Interested applicants are encouraged to attend the Information Session from 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. ET on May 23 (HIP) or May 26 (SEA). The funding opportunity announcement is open from now until July 8, 2016. Letters of intent are due by June 10, 2016. Questions can be directed to the Techlab.

Register for the Move Health Data Forward Challenge Webinar

A webinar to provide more information about the Move Health Data Forward Challenge will be held on June 7, 2016 from 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. ET.  Interested participants can also sign up to follow the Challenge to receive updates.  This challenge will help create application programming interface (API) solutions using implementation specifications developed by the HEART Workgroup. These APIs will enable individuals to securely and electronically authorize the movement of their health data to destinations they choose.

The Move Health Data Forward challenge will have three phases, with a cumulative prize amount of $250,000 and a maximum prize value per participant of $75,000. Participants may apply independently or as a team and will need to recruit and engage individuals as part of testing their solutions.

AHRQ Awards Grant to Engage Stakeholders in the Use of Clinical Decision Support

A new learning network grant from AHRQ will explore with stakeholders how patient centered outcomes research (PCOR) findings can be incorporated into clinical practice through health IT-enabled clinical decision support (CDS). Patient centered outcomes – defined as the results of medical care that are important to patients –can give patients and providers the power to make more informed health decisions.

This network will bring together multiple public and private stakeholders and monitor and measure the dissemination and use of PCOR findings in vendor-based and open source CDS tools. Please visit the AHRQ website for more information on the PCOR-CDS Learning Network.  

Want to learn more about the MACRA (Quality Payment Program) Proposed Rule?

In case you have questions about the MACRA proposed rule, CMS is offering webinars throughout the comment period. You can find a list of upcoming webinars and listening sessions, fact sheets and other helpful materials on the cms.gov website.  

Check the website often for updates, or get the latest updates sent to you from the Quality Payment Program listserv.

Change to Health App Use Scenarios and HIPAA Guidance Website

A security change has led to some users having difficultly accessing PDFs directly from a web browser. Users must now navigate to the community website and access the documents from there. You do not need to be logged in, but you do have to access the document from the community website. Web browser cache may need to be cleared if errors continue.